


Moon is mess

by Bacner



Series: Stars are cold toys [2]
Category: Ad Astra (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - post movie, Earth, F/M, Gen, Helen Lantas has echoes of MCU's Raina, Moon, Not a Crossover, Past Regrets, Some Romance, Some comedy, SpaceCom, children are the future, humanity and human relationships, monkeys in space, moon pirates, moving on forwards, opera - Freeform, relationships, some drama, tying up lost ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 23:43:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20750726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: So, what about colonel Pruitt? He isn't dead yet, it seems.





	Moon is mess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lila_luscious1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lila_luscious1/gifts).

> Disclaimer: all of the characters belong to their respective owners. Except for my OCs.

…Once upon a time, there was a man named Sebastian Pruitt, and he was a professional military man, and through waging war bravely upon the foreign foe, he reached the rank of a colonel. The fact that he knew the fine art of backroom intrigue didn’t hurt either; nor did the fact that he’d been good friends – for a while – with a fellow named Clifford McBride, until the aforemetioned Clifford McBride left off into the far-out reaches of the outer space – beyond even the great asteroid belt – and vanished without a trace, leaving colonel Pruitt retired. Happily, really. It’s not as if he looked back upon his life forever with a sense of shame, because all that he could see behind him was a valley of ashes, metaphorically speaking, now was it? Of course not!

…And then the good old Cliff came back – sort of. More precisely, he reminded his old friends at Space-Com and beyond of his existence via a series of anti-matter discharged, powerful enough to reach Earth all the way from Neptune, it seemed. Earth’s governments began to panic, rather like a bunch of sentient chickens that were confronted by an activated rotisserie, Space-Com kept its’ cool and sent the only man who could stop the Crazy Cliff – his son, Roy McBride – to, well, stop him.

…Only it seems that that was not so; in reality, Space-Com was more interested in covering for its’ collective arse rather than actually saving the Solar System. They almost got away with it, too, if their chosen assassins were not actually that incompetent; major Roy McBride really was the only man to stop his father; and Ms. Helen Lantas, the director of Martian facilities had not opted to help him for her own agenda, as she readily enough admitted in court. 

And how did colonel Sebastian Pruitt know all that? True, that was an epic story of itself – first, he’d been coerced into becoming major McBride’s handler, something that he didn’t relish, and not just because he was too old for active duty and Roy McBride had been something of a son to him, (cough). Oh no, he really had plenty of other reasons…but they all had been nullified due to a lunar pirate’s shot, (whether it was lucky or unlucky was a different story), that put the good colonel out of commission and into emergency surgery, because of his advanced age. Ouch, but for several hours he had been literally suspended between life and death at first, and then, for several weeks, he had been in a secure medical location, recovering from the aforementioned shot. The nice people that came to talk to him, (cough), and also – to interrogate him about his part in the Space-Com’s fiasco, (by then the good colonel learned that his protégé, humanity’s last and only hope, was already on his way from Mars to Neptune), and the good colonel helpful-ly cooperated, because hey! They were all going to die, crazy Clifford McBride was going to have the last laugh and to kill everyone because of his great dream, so why to weigh down your soul even more, considering everything that went down in it already? 

…Reality and sentience returned with a sharp stab of an injection. Colonel Pruitt in question blinked several times, (those ‘crazy owl’ comparisons didn’t come out of nowhere, regrettably), and refocused his attention on the TV screen, (after thanking the helpful medical orderly for keeping him together). There, on the screen, the director Lantas was testifying in court, (presided by the honorable judge Dodley), regarding her actions in the last weeks’ events. From what the colonel could see and hear, the young woman was holding up very professionally in court, regardless of the specialized lenses in her eyes and filters up her nose – the Martian’s acclimatization on Earth was not going down too smoothly, it seemed. Damned allergies.

“Very much so,” the woman in question agreed in person, as she arrived in colonel Pruitt’s recovery room, following major McBride. “Sir, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure is all mine, miss,” Pruitt smiled back. “You look a lot like your grandma, you know that? Son, glad to see you again, good to see that you’ve found time to visit this old fart.”

“Sir, please, I came to see as soon as I could,” Roy McBride turned red. “I apologize for unable to stay on the Moon to check up on your operation-“

“Son, you were in a rush to save the world, and the fault is mine as well as Space-Com’s,” the older man rolled his eyes. “Believe me, I know. I already have had my share in this media circus. Now Space-Com is getting the backlash for their sweeping-under-the-carpet strategy now, they will be blamed for everything that was their fault and that was not-“

“You mean like the space monkeys, sir?” McBride muttered almost despite himself. Pruitt blinked:

“The what now, son? I admit I was out of mainstream for a while before our reunion and do not know the modern lingo anymore-“

“Here, sir,” director Lantas said shyly and gave the good colonel the newspaper issue that held the article that discussed the mess in question: Space-Com, animal rights’ activists, the Norwegian government and several other plaintiffs were currently sorting out the mess as to who was responsible for genetically modified monkeys taking over a space biostation…and just whose biostation it was to begin with?

“…Those are some big monkeys,” Pruitt said after a pause when he realized that he could not say anything at all. 

“Yes,” McBride sounded about the same as Pruitt felt. “I didn’t see too many of them before I escaped with Cepheus’ deceased captain, but they were strong enough to kill the man in question and the bigger one was almost as big as a human was. They were also strong enough to claw and rip the station’ walls too.”

“Genetically modified animals, son,” Pruitt blinked as he realized that he might have actually missed a bigger bullet via the space pirates’ shot, metaphorically speaking. “There’s a reason as to why Space-Com and everyone else stopped using them in favor of good old humans and robotic drones in space missions. This is why.”

“Space-Com claims that it was innocent,” director Lantas said softly.

“I hope so, because otherwise – they’re insane, as in insanely stupid,” Pruitt exhaled. “And on that topic, son, what had happened with Clifford?”

“My father,” Roy muttered, sounding very small and miserable, as he tended to do, no matter how stiff his upper lip had been in the past, “he admitted everything. He admitted to leaving my mother behind, and me, and everything and everyone else. He only could not admit in failing to find any signs of life on the other planets. He found beauty, he found wonder, but he did not find life, love, hate. He denied it. He-“

“-killed everyone else that he could reach and kill in order to fuel his dreams with their lives,” Pruitt exhaled heavily. “I know. While he was never as extreme when he was your age, son, that was it. He just was not as extreme. Space… it is like a litmus paper, among other things. It reveals the truth about everyone, the good and the bad in their soul. In Clifford’s case, it was neither good nor bad, only crazy, as in one of those opera tragedies…” he shifted his attention to director Lantas. “Lass. Let’s talk about your grandma, and I don’t mean in the sense that son, if you less a woman with such wonderful eyelashes go, you’ll be almost as dumb as Clifford had been ever.”

There was a pause as the younger people just stared at Pruitt, looking red. 

“No,” Pruitt brightly continued, taking the advantage of the fact that a), he was on sick leave still, and b), he had seniority here, both in rank and in age, “I want to talk about your grandma’s youth, when she was still doing that opera.”

“She really doesn’t like to talk about it anymore; you should’ve heard the fight that she had with the general-adjunct Vogel when the other woman raised it-”

“The point is that I remember her role as the dragon queen in the ‘Last Temptation’ opera, about how the universe was created from the heart, and without it, the new universe is doomed to be still-born. This was really the problem with Clifford. He had no heart, you see.”

“I don’t know if I agree with you, sir,” Roy shook his head. “My father, yes, he was lacking something, but it wasn’t passion. It is rather as if he had too much of it, and not enough sanity. In the end, he chose without hesitation to sail away into the depths of space and not to come back to us. I- I was never so far out in the outer space on any of my missions before. It might’ve driven me insane, it has certainly affected me-“

“But you remained yourself and you did what you set out to do,” director Lantas spoke up suddenly, startling the others, (really, cough). “You reacted differently from your father because you’re different.” She turned red and saw something interesting on the carpet, (cough). 

“What the young lady said,” Pruitt nodded solemnly. “Where were we? Ah yes, who are the monkeys who are peaking at us from behind the doorway?”

Roy and Helen turned around just in time to see a toddler and two slightly older twins disappear from their vantage point. “My nieces and nephew,” Helen said brightly. “Grandma often made a point about me being her only granddaughter, which is also true. Now that I actually have some nieces and a nephew, I think that I relate to her better.”

“Glad to hear this,” Pruitt nodded sagely. “Son, now that we’re talking about children, do you know if Ripley’s still has those jazz night specials on Friday? You know, complete with fish dinners and all?”

“Yes they do,” Roy blinked. “Why-?”

“Take the lady out, son, and show her some of Earth’s better features,” Pruitt said with a very pointed wink: Roy McBride may have saved the world, but sometimes he still remained oblivious to some of the less epic points of life. “Son, the protagonist of the opera that I’ve mentioned be-fore? He almost ended up alone in a cold, dead desert because he was an ass. So was Clifford. Do not be one. Space-Com made it worse in the beginning, but at the end? It was all him.”

“Yes sir, thank you,” Roy muttered, rather woodenly, (apparently he was beginning to remember as to why the relationship between him and the older man had always been somewhat strained), took Helen Lantas carefully by her arm and the pair left.

“Well, I did all that I could, especially for now,” Pruitt muttered to no one in particular. “Good luck to the kid and his new lady now-“

The children were back, peeking shyly at him from around the corner.

“Yes, monkeys?” Pruitt sighed. “You know, it’s rude acting like this. Come in here already!”

The twins shyly shuffled in, followed by the more confused toddler.

“So, are you going to be our new grandpa?” they asked in unison.

Pruitt choked.

End


End file.
